Homeward Bound
by HazelnutCookie
Summary: When a new mysterious girl shows up at the school trying to run away from her past, odd things start to occure that no one could of predicted and none of them can prevent
1. Chapter One

Eve Sanders hitched her bag up higher on her back and ran her fingers through her long hair as she watched the building in front of her with a mix of doubt and curiosity. The sky was getting dark above her as the clouds got fat with rain, and if for no other reason, Eve would go in to get dry.  
  
Humming 'Walking In Memphis', she walked up the stone steps and rapped on the door a couple times and waited nothing. She knocked again and this time a voice responded, "Well you can open a door can't you?" She took the huge brass knob in her hand and turned. As she stepped inside, she suppressed a little yelp of fear. Right in front of her was a man with winged out hair and intensely dark eyes. "Jesus," Eve murmured as she pressed a hand to her heart. "No, but thanks for confusing us. Professor has been expecting you"  
  
Before Eve could ask him what he meant by that he was gone but another door opened and an old man with laughing pale blue eyes that Eve could already see came rolling out on an odd sort of wheelchair. "I hear this is where people go when they need help controlling their powers and all," She said as he got closer and Charles Xavier smiled politely at her. "It certainly is Miss?" "Sanders. Eve Sanders...And in case you were wondering I didn't mean to say that in a 'Bond, James Bond' sort of way"  
  
Charles laughed now and Eve smiled, but not quite at ease. "That man," Eve said looking at the way Logan had gone "With the hair and the muscles for days, he said you were expecting me" Charles only smiled again and motioned for Eve to follow him into the room he had come out of.  
  
Said room was one of the most beautiful rooms that Eve had ever seen in her life. A huge glossy table was set in the middle of the room flanked with shelves of countless books and little silvery instruments and crystal that caught the fading light. "This place is pretty cool," Eve said a little awed and Charles nodded. "Yes, I like to think so too. Now Miss Sanders, what Logan, as it is his name, meant is that I have indeed been expecting you. Using Cerebro, I've had a lock on you for some time and I could see that you were coming here to us, the only question was of when"  
  
Eve eyed him for a long moment before reaching into her pack and pulled out a thick manila envelope. "How much does it cost to enroll here with room and board?" Charles shook his head. "You don't pay. This is a school and also a harbor for people like yourself and everyone else here. A place to get a decent education and be able to hone and practice your powers without persecution. Now, I assume that you would like to stay with us?"  
  
She looked at Charles, looked at the desk, looked at the great glass window behind him, looked at the sun gleaming from his bald head until she finally answered. "Yeah I do. You won't tell anyone I'm here will you?" He looked at her for a long unsettling moment. "Anyone in particular you don't wish me to tell?" Eve shook her head and Charles continued. "What is your power, Miss Kelly?"  
  
She sighed and took in a deep breath. "I can sorta manipulate peoples mind, like if it's raining and they're driving on the edge of a cliff, I can make it look like its sunny and they'll drive off the edge...Not that I'd ever do that though, that's why I'm here. You see because sometimes I can't always control it and people...people get hurt" Charles was watching her with the same calm patience and nodded. "How old are you Miss Sanders?" "Seventeen, actually up until two days ago I was sixteen, but that doesn't matter" "Being so young and having such an amazing power must be very hard for you"  
  
Eve scoffed. "Yeah you're telling me" Charles laughed and began to look around in his desk and pulled out a piece of paper and a pen. "Why do you need to know where I live?" She asked warily with a raised eyebrow and unpainted mouth twisted into a little moue. "Just for reference. Nobody will know you're here if you don't want them to" Eve watched him for a long while through her clear green eyes and quietly began to work on the form.  
  
When she was done, a man she had labeled as "Mr. Fuzzy" showed her to her room. Kurt Wagner didn't mind the new girl, he liked the way that her sultry southern voice flowed, the new girl was spunky and had a beautiful bright smile. "This is your room," He said after leading her up three flights of stairs past the classrooms. "Oh my God you have got to be kidding me!" Kurt followed her in. "I'm sure the Professor could find you another room if you don't like this"  
  
Eve turned on him. "Oh don't you dare take this room away from me, I love it. I'm probably never going to leave it!" Kurt watched her for a moment longer and smiled. "Well I am glad you're happy. Where are you from? You have an accent, and of course the hat" Eve laughed and tossed her black cowboy hat onto the bed blanketed in thick crimson sheets and ran her fingers through her rainfall of sun streaked brown hair. "Luttrell Tennessee, it's a really little town so right away my special adaptation was never accepted there. So I came here and now that's pretty much my life to date"  
  
Kurt nodded and looked around the room. The rain was falling heavily now and coating the glossy glass and made the light look green. He looked back to Eve and was a little surprised to see a guitar in her arms. "Where did that come from?" He asked with raised eyebrows as he regarded the only bag she had brought in. "Talent," She said with a sparkling smile and began to strum the strings lovingly before set it proudly in the corner of the room. "If you don't mind I'm a little tired, but if anyone needs me they can come in and wake me up, I don't get cranky so it's okay." She blew him a kiss, winked a pretty eye and settled on the smooth covers and within minutes she had fallen asleep curled up in jeans, a button down work shirt and authentic cowboy boots. 


	2. Chapter Two

The rain had stopped when Eve awoke. The sky was dark and clear, dotted with tiny diamond stars. For the first time, as Eve turned over and wrapped the sheets that she had snuggled her way under, she missed home. Luttrell was a narrow-minded place but it was still home for her.  
  
Eve rolled over again, gripped the pillows against her breasts, and snuggled against it. They were warm and smelled slightly like laundry detergent and vanilla. Mustering energy, she sat up and lazily began to smooth out the clothes that she had slept in and ran her fingers through her slightly tangled hair. Doubting anyone would still be awake at 1 in the morning, Eve sensed her way down the hallway to the great flight of stairs, but only after taking off her boots at the risk of waking anybody up. The cool wood felt good under her bare feet and she quickly propped her most beloved black cowboy hat at an angle so it was slightly tilted over her right eye.  
  
She padded down the stairs quietly and went to one of the wonderful windows she had seen before that stretched out almost the span of the whole wall. She leaned against it and sighed. The stars were beginning to fade as the lights from the city became more persistent. Eve squinted her pretty eyes against the sky and slowly the lights began to fade in the background and the stars reappeared, the half-hidden moon came from behind the clouds that were magically vanishing and if being shot by a giant sling, bright flaming stars were shooting across the sky. "Having fun kid?" A rough voice from behind her said.  
  
Eve jumped nearly five feet in the air and spun around like a rabbit under a gun. She was faced with the man from earlier that day, she thought she remembered that Charles had called him Logan, but she wasn't sure. "Of course I am," She offered him a winning smile in attempt to cover up her nervousness, but she supposed he had seen right through it. "You know people in New York aren't exactly custom to seeing a full moon on a cloudless night along with a meteor shower." The last few stars were just flying by in the sky and Eve's smile broadened. "I guess not, but it sure is pretty huh?"  
  
Logan slowly began to take Eve in from her head to barefoot toe. "You're from the South aren't you?" It wasn't really a question but Eve nodded anyway. "Yeah I am, Tennessee. What gave it away?" She asked with a smirking smile as she ran an elegant finger around the smooth brim of the hat. "You smell like you'd be from the South, like sunshine and wildflowers, but your hat is a dead giveaway." Eve laughed and watched him steadily from under the brim. "I'm pretty sure I've seen you somewhere else, I recognized you a little when I first got here but I couldn't put my finger on it. You didn't used to fight in cage matches did you?"  
  
He watched her uneasily for a long while until he nodded. "Yeah I did" That was all he said and watched the sky through the window. It was calm and easy now. The clouds slowly moving back into place and the stars faded thanks to light pollution. "So what can you do?" Eve asked him casually as she leaned against the wall and watched him expectantly. "What do you mean?" She shrugged. "Well I mean that if you're in this place then you obviously must have some kick ass power or whatever, so what can you do?" He shook his head. "Not the time or place, but I'll show you some time kid, and you have classes in the morning so I would sleep as much as I can, you have Scott first thing. I'd pray if I were you."  
  
She was about to ask him who Scott was and why she should be worried about that, but as soon as he had appeared he had turned on his heels and walked down the hall and was gone. Eve was just now aware of how cold the hallway was getting, she wrapped her arms around herself but that barely prevented the cold that seemed to seep into her bones and freeze her blood. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to imagine the dark icy hallway into a beautiful tropical beach with the sounds of seagulls and bright lapping blue water on a gold sandy beach. Even though she could feel the sand beneath her toes in the hall and the distant cry of a bird of the wind, the cold was still there in her bones.  
  
Opening her eyes she kicked at a shell that remained on a small patch of golden sand and looked around her nervously, there was no one about and she quickly told herself that she was probably imagining things, that were her job to make things that weren't real appear to be so, she was the Illusionist. She passed her hat from hand to hand, as she went in search for the stairs again. As she touched the first bottom step with her bare feet, she yelped in pain and jumped back. It felt as if she had stepped on wintry razor blades. She looked down at her feet half expecting to see frost encrusted blood seeping from long slits in the flesh.  
  
She headed up the stairs and stubbornly told herself that it wasn't real, that her mind was playing tricks on her, as it liked to do when it was late and she was getting tired. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms to try to ward off the unrelenting unexplainable freeze. Her room wasn't that far away now and she hurried up the stairs, no longer caring about waking anyone up, all Eve wanted was to get away from the phantom chill and under her nice warm safe blankets and snuggle with her guitar until the actual morning.  
  
However, as she rushed up the stairs, she had the eerie sense of being watched, of being followed with someone's eyes rather then the physical person themselves and sometimes that was scarier for Eve, after a few dark instances in Luttrell. She shook her head and almost defiantly placed the hat back on her head and let the door slam shut behind her. She dived under the crimson covers and hugged the ivory plated guitar close to her, it was her one comfort that never let her down. But back down on the landing of the stairs on the first floor, a pair of bright blue eyes with long sandy brown lashes were watching her go. The man that the eyes belonged to began to quietly laugh to himself as he watched Eve turn and bolt up the stairs like she was being chased by the devil himself. 


	3. Chapter Three

Eve tossed fitfully in her few hours of sleep after the incident in the kitchen. The eyes still seemed to be watching her even though she couldn't see them and she didn't like that feeling at all. Her dreams were a blur of colors and sounds, garbled voices all about her and distorted shadows.  
  
When she woke up the next morning, fresh clean sunlight was coming through the windows, but she didn't remember opening the windows or pulling back the delicate curtains. The air was sweet with the smell that comes after a day of heavy rain, it was a smell that she remembered the most of Tennessee; she didn't realize how much she missed it. But what was under the window made her raise a minnow of a dark eyebrow, she didn't remember that single beautiful table then when Kurt showed her the room the other day, she definitely would have remembered it.  
  
She got closer to it and as she did a huge smile split her face. She run her fingers lightly over the long tapered paintbrushes and elegant calligraphy pens. Upon a thick pad of bound art paper was a note that read. "I hope you don't mind, I hear that it helps you relax. You'll find the paints and inks in the bottom draw. Welcome home" It was signed 'Charles' in loopy script and Eve suppressed a squeal of joy as she pulled open the bottom drawer of the mahogany table.  
  
As promised, there were rows of paints and inks, in as many colors as possible and she had to restrain herself from opening all of them. She checked her watch and saw that it was a little past seven in the morning and there was already sounds of the other students in the hallways. Classes were beginning today. Eve wanted to cringe at the thought. It wasn't that she didn't like school per say, in fact she was quite good at it, but it was the thought of starting somewhere new that made her nervous.  
  
She reached for her bag but stopped as she noticed that the clothes from it had been emptied and smoothed out in the dresser draws across the room. She sang softly to herself as she ran a pretty silver backed brush through her hair and began to get dressed. Her mother had always said that the thing about first impressions is that you only get to make one; she was going to try to make it her best. She pulled on a black tank top that hiked up a little and showed off her country tanned tight stomach and a pair of baggy jeans that rode low on her hips. She tied a silk scarf through the belt loops and eyed herself in the mirror critically.  
  
She pressed a bit of loose powder under her slightly shadowed eyes to cover up the evidence of lack of sleep and slicked some sheer pink lip-gloss over her pouty lips and added just a little bit of the gloss to her cheeks bones and dabbed it down to look like a natural young blush. She took a deep breath as she slipped into her slightly beaten boots and pulled the door open.  
  
As Eve turned to go down the long hallway, she ran right into something that felt like a marble statue. Before she could stumble and fall to the ground, a strong arm wrapped around her waist and held her still. "We need to stop running into each other this way kid" Logan said with a hint of amusement in his voice as he looked Eve up and down once quickly. "Yeah," She agreed and shifted a little. She didn't know exactly what it was, but something about the dangerously handsome man in front of her made her nervous.  
  
"I'm showing you where your classes are" He took her by the arm and led her down the hall. His legs were considerably longer then hers, he had a good foot and a few inches over her, and so she had to trot to keep up unless she wanted to be dragged. "What does Scott teach?" Eve asked as he finally slowed down and she was able to catch her breath. "Science, I think it's stupid anyway, and then you have History with Storm and then English with the Professor in his office" Eve nodded and tried to ignore Logan's slanted stare when she yawned widely. "What's the matter with you?" "I didn't sleep too well, it's a new place for me y'know?" It was a lie and she suspected that Logan knew that, but she was thankful that he let it go.  
  
"Well Scott's class is an hour and a half long so you'll have plenty of time to catch up on your sleep. He's the only one you really don't want to deal with, he's an asshole" "Don't you have anything better to do Logan?" The sudden voice from behind made Eve jump in alarm but Logan stayed perfectly still except for the blooming smirk on his firm lips. "I do as a matter of fact" Was all he said and after winking slyly to Eve, sauntered down the hall. 


End file.
